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Recent declines in commodity prices have raised the idea that the so-called commodity supercycle is over, but not everyone believes that.

Month to date futures prices, based on the most-active contracts, for gold
have lost around 5%, silver’s
down over 7%. Oil
and natural-gas futures
have lost around 4%.

But “despite recent falls, commodity prices are still near their levels of early to mid-2008, just before the global financial crisis hit,” said analysts at McKinsey & Company, in a recent research note.

However, Goldman, it seems, is not quite finished with its bearish gold view. In a note entitled \”There are weeks when decades happen,\” Goldman lowered its short gold recommendation to $1,400 on Tuesday, after two days of heavy gold selling dropped the metal below Goldman\’s $1,450 short target. And if the investment bank is to be believed, things aren\’t going to get better soon.

\”The most recent ETF holdings showed acceleration in the liquidation of length, which points to a broad-based sell-off extending beyond the futures markets with potentially more room to go,\” says Goldman. Its analysts say they will stick to that call while they wait for evidence of a bottom, though their price forecasts will not change for now. Read The day gold died

So if you can\’t put your faith in gold, what can you put it in? Natural gas, says Goldman.

At one point, gold futures
dropped more than $60 an ounce to trade below $1,500 an ounce on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange. They haven’t closed below that level since July 2011, according to FactSet data. Silver futures
, known for their volatility, were taking an even bigger hit, down over 5% at last check.

Oil futures
sank more than 3% to hit a low of $90.27 a barrel on Nymex and were ready to close at their lowest level since early March of this year.

A revolution in oil and natural-gas development hasn’t just spurred economic growth and new job creation in the United States, it’s turning the nation into an “energy superpower,” according to the American Petroleum Institute.

“There is a new energy reality of vast domestic resources of oil and natural gas brought about by advancing technology,” Karen Moreau, executive director of API’s New York State Petroleum Council told reporters in Washington Monday.

The U.S. produces more natural gas
than any nation in the world, she said, and its daily production of more than 6 million barrels of oil
is the third largest in the world.

BP PLC
rose 0.4% and Statoil
traded about flat on Thursday while authorities on both sides of the Atlantic respond to an attack and hostage-taking at a natural gas facility in Algeria with deaths reported but unconfirmed.

The attack on the the six-year-old In Amenas energy complex has left in doubt the facility\’s energy output of 213,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day. BP developed the site after a 1998 production-sharing contract with Sonatrach. Statoil bought a stake in the project from BP in 2003.

\”Relative to total production, the volumes here aren’t that high,\” said Phil Weiss, an analyst at Argus Research. \”Energy stocks overall are up today, and this incident isn’t material enough to overcome general market trends in the sector.\”

The world’s oil market should eventually see a glut of crude oil and fall in prices given non-OPEC growth in production, especially from unconventional and deepwater North American sources, and “steady but unspectacular” demand growth, according to a report from Global Hunter Securities Tuesday.

Getty Images

An oil refinery in Texas.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries will be required to cut its member production by 2.5 million barrels per day “at some point” in 2015 to keep prices within a “palatable fiscal breakeven range,” analysts at GHS said. OPEC’s member production quota currently stands at 30 million barrels per day.

GHS also forecasts that North American supply growth “could precipitate a seismic shift in the geopolitical landscape by undermining OPEC as the heretofore hegemonic global provider of swing capacity” for the global oil market.

Analysts at Credit Suisse crafted a list with more than 20 stocks that stand to benefit from the U.S. shale boom. Besides direct impact on oil and gas companies and oil-field services firms, the \”shale revolution\” would also benefit companies in sectors such as steel, chemicals and fertilizers, industrial machinery, and alternative energy, the analysts said.

\”What started in a field in Texas has turned into a worldwide phenomenon, with ramifications spreading across various commodities and industries,\” the analysts said.

While the power sector has seen a couple of blockbuster deals in the last couple of years, Gerry Yurkevicz of consulting firm Oliver Wyman sees rich returns for the industry by thinking small.

Reuters

Although multi-billion-dollar tie-ups like Exelon Corp.
buying Constellation Energy and Duke Energy
snapping up Progress Energy have drawn investors\’ attention, smaller deals shouldn’t be overlooked, he said in a phone interview.

“It’s a good market for infrastructure funds and for private equity companies who may want to get into the utility space,” said Yurkevicz, a utilities-industry consultant. “There are a lot of opportunities out there in the marketplace, even for the largest utilities who want to grow their business.”

More than 350 coal-fired generators, or about 6% of the U.S.\’s power generating capacity, are \”ripe for retirement,\” the Union of Concerned Citizens said in a report released Tuesday.

Such plants, mostly in the South and the Midwest, are no longer economically competitive and should be slated for closure, the group said.

\”Growing competition from cheaper, cleaner alternatives — including natural gas and renewable energy sources such as wind and solar — is making it harder for these generators to produce energy economically,\” the report said.

Energy industry analyst Daniel Yergin writes Tuesday that the mostly positive implications of the shale gas and oil revolution in the U.S. are only just beginning to be understood.

Yergin\’s piece in The Wall Street Journal plays off a research study released Tuesday by his firm, IHS. Among the conclusions, fracking of gas and oil shale is tied to 1.7 million new jobs since the technology became widely adopted half a decade ago. Yergin says that number could rise to 3 million jobs by 2020.

The increased energy production in the U.S. will boost federal and state revenues by $62 billion this year alone, according to Yergin.

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